I Was A Teenage Beatnik

News Under and Above Ground

Last month I was bitching and moaning that I didn't have a clue what to write about next. And I shamelessly begged for direction from you, dear readers... the audience I hope are out there. Actually I was ashamed, but that's besides the point. I want feedback from my readers and I ain't too proud to beg. But YOU aren't writing. Well, the hell with you. The muse has been with me, and this column has been writing itself all week.

First, I was telling a Kinko's co-worker some stories about my years at CREEM. (You know, parties: Small Faces at our house/office, where one of the lads got so wasted, he fell asleep on our couch & missed the plane to his next gig -- no it wasn't Ron Wood, and even then, Rod Stewart was too stuck up to show up; concerts: the opening of the "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" tour -- the movie didn't do it justice; rock stars met: my absolute favorite, Mac Rebbenac a/k/a Dr. John... laid some Conqueror Root on me after an all-night interview & swear to g-d, there were credit cards in the mail & offers of money from my family the very next day, but I digress.) When my friend joked to the effect that I was an "old hippie," I objected not to being called "old," that's just a value judgement, I didn't like being called a hippie!

Sure, I protested the war in the sixties, while wearing army fatigues and sporting a one-of button that read "Free Calley AND Manson" -- given to me by a former Digger from Berkley visiting the CREEM farm in Walled Lake (sorry pal, I forgot your name) which was controversial enough to get me accosted by a newsdealer in Grand Central. (He apparently didn't understand the irony that they were both killers.) And I lived sort of communally for a while with the CREEM crew. But the essence of hippie was to drop out, which I never did. Besides, the roots of my "hipness" were from a time long before.

Once upon a time in the 50's, I clandestinely helped paint the walls of a soon to be opened jazz joint (flat black, of course) called "The Minor Key." And I lied to get out of the house to sit in the balcony & listen to such greats as Thelonious Monk and Ramsey Lewis (wearing a black turtleneck, of course) while still in junior high. In other words, I was "into" music at a young age. I didn't have the self-discipline to learn to play, but I "roadied" for a drummer in junior high, and for a stand-up base player in high school. I tried doing "serious" nude studies of my girlfriend (Beverly, write me, I'd like to make amends) - the drawings sucked, but the photos are still worthy of my portfolio.

I was a beatnik! I didn't know it at the time, but even my nickname was chosen because of an association with a poet living in one of my family's apartments on the Wayne State campus. I was so impressed by the bohemian lifestyle of a guy I knew only as "Joe" that when I read one of his (self-published, I think) poems, "A Wheel Is To Roll," and saw that he spelled his name "Jau," I spent weeks trying to come up with a unique by line for my own creative efforts. It seems pretty feeble now, but at the time I thought "Ric" was hip. (BTW, it's proper to say "I'm hip," but if you are cool, "you're hep.")

So first came the reminder that I was/am a beatnik. Then, shortly after a suggestion from my editor that I do a column on internet news sources, what should appear in my daily e-mail news feed from Wired News? A story titled "Literary Pioneer Enters New Era." This story about Evergreen Review editor and Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset, brought back a flood of memories of the education I got on my own while struggling to get through public school. Without Mr. Rosset putting it on the line, we might've never had the opportunity to read William Burroughs, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett or D.H. Lawrence, at least not during the repressive '50s. Anyone who cares about freedom of the press in America should click here to read about a genuine American hero, and learn more about the beginnings of beat to boot.

Wired News writer Steve Silberman says "American readers first discovered Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the pages of Rosset's review, alongside contributions by Malcolm X, Woody Allen, Terry Southern, Che Guevera, Timothy Leary, Boris Pasternak, and Diane DiPrima...." I fondly remember almost all of those issues. (For some reason, I can't remember being introduced to Tim Leary in Evergreen -- I did meet his Harvard cohort, Richard Alpert, nee Baba Ram Das, during an alternate media conference at Goddard College in Vermont, one summer (early '70s, I think) after which I drove home through Canada & stopped to visit Gilda Radner in Toronto & got hassled by U.S, Customs at Detroit for possession of what later proved to be salt tablets, but I digress.)

Be sure to check out the Evergreen Review web site (currently under construction, but there's already lots o' good stuff). Quoting again from the Wired article, " 'Saving the underground of the past for the future' is the site's slogan. And when all the magazine's editions have been scanned and uploaded, its table of contents will read like a cross section of the modern literary imagination." Don't miss it.

More than enough nostalgia for one month. If, like me, you're a current news junkie, watch CNN (if you can stand all the Monicablewclinsky coverage). Most of the "straight" news sites I've checked out might be good for research, but usually they're crowded, ugly & difficult at best to navigate. However, if you want to include technology news in your daily diet, subscribe to the e-mail feeds from Wired News, Cnet's News.com and ZDNet's Anchordesk. They're free, and they always have links to interesting stuff. I promised our editor I'd do a column about news sites, and I think you, dear readers, deserve a comprehensive survey. But just in case I don't get around to it for awhile, let me also point you toward Bloomberg for great business stats and Kitco, Inc. for up to the minute (or hour, at least) gold & silver fixings and historic charts. And speaking of stats and charts, can anyone tell me why Billboard, the music biz bible, calls their most popular chart "The Billboard 200" but it only shows the top 100 chart positions?

Hey! This kind of rant belongs in Scott's Free Speech column or Fred's Free Money pages. Besides, I've used up my space for this month. Let me conclude by confessing that I did get one response to last month's begging for feedback. My Aunt asked me "Why do you want to promote porn?" Indeed. I could've started a debate, but I said it all last month. (Click here for Archives.) I'm just looking for an excuse to surf the porn waves. Since you aren't forthcoming, the only porn site I'm gonna mention this month isn't really a porn site at all! Eroscan, is an index of Adult sites. But not just an index, it's the most complete index to the naughty bits of the internet there is. Nuff said.

Thanks for all the fun.

Richard Siegel, Web Publishing Consultant

P.S. My myhand.com account balance dropped for the first time since I became a beta tester for them (below $180,000). I guess it's time to quit bragging.

email Ric Siegel

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